Tuesday, May 14, 2013

jQuery.noConflict() you smell like a stinky cheese!

So a little background

I was working on a project implementing a design into a project which included the html, graphics and a few javascript libraries and files. Upon initial investigation everything seem on par with what you would expect from a UI using jQuery and jQuery UI. I ran the provided files in the browser and everything seemed okay, no console errors in the browser debugger. It was using a few jQuery plugins that I have never used before but everything seemed to be displaying correctly except for the adGallery plugin, but I wrote that off to a minor error somewhere in the css or markup, knowing that if all else fails, I could easily implement a different plugin like PikaChoose to maintain the functionality.

Now to fix the adGallery

While integrating the design into the functional site I notice on of the javascript files it used jQuery.noConflict(). I didn't recognize this tag as I had never used it, but the jQuery library is pretty expansive and given no browser debugger error I wrote it off to my own lack of knowledge and moved on to trying to fix the adGallery. In Visual Studio, I reviewed the markup and css and both seemed inline with what the documentation was showing but when I ran it Visual Studio I would get an error stating adGallery is not a supported method or property. I did a little searching and nothing turned up about compatibility issues, so I chalked it up to conflict causing the jQuery library to not compile properly at run time. So I switched the markup, css and library out with PikaChoose and attempted to run in debug again.

Here is the smelly part

Unfortunately the error remained only stating that PikaChoose() is not a supported method or property. Having used this before I knew that it worked. This is when I noticed the jQuery.noConflict() a few lines above it, so on a whim I moved my instantiation code above this line and everything ran okay in debug. So I removed this line of code and a new error came light stating that Method of Property 'msie' was not found or null. Turns out that this error was related an incompatibility between jQuery 1.9.1 and jQuery UI 1.8.11.

So what is jQuery.noConflict() used for?

jQuery.noConflict() relinquished the control of the $ object. This would mean that any errors would not show in the debugger because the $ object would be empty or null. For more information on the proper usuage of jQuery.noConflict() check out the API Documentation at http://api.jquery.com/jQuery.noConflict/

In summary if you ever see jQuery.noConflict() make it is truly being used for its intended purpose.

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